Territorial connections between the public policies of Schools for Apprentices and Artisans and the Federal Institutes of Education, Science and Technology

Abstract

This essay proposes an analysis of professional education in Brazil, examining the territorial connection between the Apprentices and Artisans Schools (EAA), created by Decree 7,566 of 1909, and the Federal Institutes of Education, Science and Technology (IFs), instituted by Law 11,892 of 2008, from the perspective of the Geography of Education. The central problem questions whether there is a territorial connection between these institutions, if the EAA constitute the geographic origin of the current Federal Network of Professional, Scientific and Technological Education (RFEPCT), and whether the EAA configured a network of educational institutions. The qualitative analysis, based on historical documents and bibliographic sources, reveals that there is clear territorial continuity between the EAA and the IFs, evidenced by the permanence of historical headquarters, century-old campuses, and the maintenance of the original locations as institutional nuclei. It is understood that, from a geographical point of view, the EAA constitute the territorial origin of the RFEPCT, although the notion of “network”, given the context of 1909, must be problematized, as the EAA represented a planned geographical dispersion by the State, yet without functional articulation among themselves, an essential characteristic of a geographical network.